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What is objective in this case? The CDC records the statistics for adverse affects, vaccine effectiveness, etc., but they also have a financial and political in

What is objective in this case? The CDC records the statistics for adverse affects, vaccine effectiveness, etc., but they also have a financial and political incentive for these stats to look good. If you use their numbers for objectivity, it's already inherently subjective based on the way they record metrics, and the metrics they focused on. I saw this very plainly with Covid case metrics.

azinman2 4y ago
What makes you say they have financial and political incentives? They get funded whether you get the flu or not, so that seems very hard to believe. They also aren’t tied to a standing in their ability to prevent the flu, so what would be the political risk? And that’s even assuming the scientists behind it could be swayed by politics in reporting of stats. Big claims require big evidence.
- politician 4y ago
  I'm not advocating for either position in this thread, but surely you watched the CDC switch from one policy position to another dramatically different position multiple times during 2021. They made decisions and rewrote those decisions within 24 hours due to political blowback not just once, but multiple times. They might do good science, but they lost any trust I had in their ability to set and execute a coherent national policy.
  - Firmwarrior 4y ago
    Yeah man, the CDC probably knew the right path from the beginning, but they lied to us and said not to use masks, then they said it was OK to keep congregating so long as we wash our hands.
    - LarryMullins 4y ago
      > Yeah man, the CDC probably knew the right path from the beginning, but they lied to us and said not to use masks Your tone suggests sarcasm, but this claim is literally true.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    The whole "don't trust someone unless they dogmatically stick to one position" thing is quite a take.
    - politician 4y ago
      When you are responsible for setting policy for 333,000,000 people, changing it a few hours later is a disgrace. They couldn't spend the time to get the feedback before announcing the policy and then had to walk it back the next day. That's hubris. The fact that it happened multiple times (masks, schools, full lockdown then "essential" workers) is a national embarrassment.
    - ithkuil 4y ago
      It's no coincidence that most pseudo-science alternatives always have an answer for things and it never changes (see homeopathy or the general notion that if it's "natural" it must always br the best)
- ithkuil 4y ago
  I wonder why the anti-vaccine people can't crowd-fund serious systematic studies about the phenomenon. All what I see are citations of papers about this or that detail and then use it as "proof!". There are hundreds of millions if not even more people who are fearful of vaccines and/or don't trust the government/elites involvement in the research. All they have to do is to hire a very large number of scientists to do serious independent research.
  - azinman2 4y ago
    Why would they? There is plenty of proof of safety, they just ignore that. They don’t actually have the ability to understand what questions to be asking, what good study design looks like, how to interpret results, what statistics matter, the background of knowledge used to interpret any results, etc. Which is fine because few do, and the best at it are already hired into the right roles. Those are the opinions one should use as a proxy, not because they’re perfect and never make a mistake, but because the ordinary person would be spectacularly worse at it. Yet they “do research” which means just let confirmation bias run wild completely ungrounded. Let’s say they funded such a study and it came back with “the mainstream” answer which isn’t what they want.. you think they’d change their mind? I had read that flat earthers have tried to do similar things, each time getting the “wrong answer,” so they explain it away incorrectly. It’s very sad because all of this “destroy institutions, destroy science, destroy XYZ” is rooted in extreme greed for one particular thing (eg less taxes for the Koch brothers) and it ends up taking all of society out with it. It’s very easy to be against something, particularly when you don’t understand it.
  - fwungy 4y ago
    Because the vaccine makers have thousands of times more money and media power. A study is just a study. They'd fund multiple counter studies. Vaccines are a subscription model business for pharma. Every time they get a new vaccine approved it's a potential market of 8 billion people that they don't have to wait for to get sick. People argue that pharma would actually make more money not selling flu vaccines, for example, because people would have to pay for more expensive treatments that would benefit them more, but that's illogical because most flu is treated with cheap otc meds at home. Vaccines are great, but people will lose faith in them if they get the impression that pharma is motivated by greed and not for doing good for humanity.
ithkuil 4y ago
But that's not the argument that was used as a start of this thread. It was literally "I know somebody who got a vaccine side effects and I know somebody (myself) who survived many flu seasons without problems". Sure, you're pointing out one mechanism that nudges things the other way. But there is also a strong psychological mechanism that makes people fearful of vaccines no matter what. What if this mechanism may cause people to use exaggerate the effects of the various flaws/bad incentives you pointed out?

azinman2 4y ago

What makes you say they have financial and political incentives? They get funded whether you get the flu or not, so that seems very hard to believe. They also aren’t tied to a standing in their ability to prevent the flu, so what would be the political risk? And that’s even assuming the scientists behind it could be swayed by politics in reporting of stats. Big claims require big evidence.

politician 4y ago
I'm not advocating for either position in this thread, but surely you watched the CDC switch from one policy position to another dramatically different position multiple times during 2021. They made decisions and rewrote those decisions within 24 hours due to political blowback not just once, but multiple times. They might do good science, but they lost any trust I had in their ability to set and execute a coherent national policy.
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  Yeah man, the CDC probably knew the right path from the beginning, but they lied to us and said not to use masks, then they said it was OK to keep congregating so long as we wash our hands.
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    > Yeah man, the CDC probably knew the right path from the beginning, but they lied to us and said not to use masks Your tone suggests sarcasm, but this claim is literally true.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  The whole "don't trust someone unless they dogmatically stick to one position" thing is quite a take.
  - politician 4y ago
    When you are responsible for setting policy for 333,000,000 people, changing it a few hours later is a disgrace. They couldn't spend the time to get the feedback before announcing the policy and then had to walk it back the next day. That's hubris. The fact that it happened multiple times (masks, schools, full lockdown then "essential" workers) is a national embarrassment.
  - ithkuil 4y ago
    It's no coincidence that most pseudo-science alternatives always have an answer for things and it never changes (see homeopathy or the general notion that if it's "natural" it must always br the best)
ithkuil 4y ago
I wonder why the anti-vaccine people can't crowd-fund serious systematic studies about the phenomenon. All what I see are citations of papers about this or that detail and then use it as "proof!". There are hundreds of millions if not even more people who are fearful of vaccines and/or don't trust the government/elites involvement in the research. All they have to do is to hire a very large number of scientists to do serious independent research.
- azinman2 4y ago
  Why would they? There is plenty of proof of safety, they just ignore that. They don’t actually have the ability to understand what questions to be asking, what good study design looks like, how to interpret results, what statistics matter, the background of knowledge used to interpret any results, etc. Which is fine because few do, and the best at it are already hired into the right roles. Those are the opinions one should use as a proxy, not because they’re perfect and never make a mistake, but because the ordinary person would be spectacularly worse at it. Yet they “do research” which means just let confirmation bias run wild completely ungrounded. Let’s say they funded such a study and it came back with “the mainstream” answer which isn’t what they want.. you think they’d change their mind? I had read that flat earthers have tried to do similar things, each time getting the “wrong answer,” so they explain it away incorrectly. It’s very sad because all of this “destroy institutions, destroy science, destroy XYZ” is rooted in extreme greed for one particular thing (eg less taxes for the Koch brothers) and it ends up taking all of society out with it. It’s very easy to be against something, particularly when you don’t understand it.
- fwungy 4y ago
  Because the vaccine makers have thousands of times more money and media power. A study is just a study. They'd fund multiple counter studies. Vaccines are a subscription model business for pharma. Every time they get a new vaccine approved it's a potential market of 8 billion people that they don't have to wait for to get sick. People argue that pharma would actually make more money not selling flu vaccines, for example, because people would have to pay for more expensive treatments that would benefit them more, but that's illogical because most flu is treated with cheap otc meds at home. Vaccines are great, but people will lose faith in them if they get the impression that pharma is motivated by greed and not for doing good for humanity.

ithkuil 4y ago

But that's not the argument that was used as a start of this thread. It was literally "I know somebody who got a vaccine side effects and I know somebody (myself) who survived many flu seasons without problems". Sure, you're pointing out one mechanism that nudges things the other way. But there is also a strong psychological mechanism that makes people fearful of vaccines no matter what. What if this mechanism may cause people to use exaggerate the effects of the various flaws/bad incentives you pointed out?